gold, a reckless piling up of treasure, which he has not the sense to
use. As long as there are shouting crews upon the sea and flaming
ships, he is happy; but give him at last the gold which he has striven
to win, and he knows nothing better than to sit like the successful
pirate in a common ale-house, and make his boast to boon companions. I
believe that the dullest men in all the world are very rich men; and I
have sometimes thought that it cannot need a very high order of
intelligence to acquire wealth, since some of the meanest of mankind
appear to prosper at the business. A certain vulpine shrewdness of
intelligence seems the thing most needed, and this may coexist with a
general dulness of mind which would disgrace a savage.

The thing that is least perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in
money ends at the point where economy becomes unnecessary. The man who
can buy anything he covets, without any consultation with his banker,
values nothing that he buys. There is a subtle pleasure in the
extravagance that contests with prudence; in the anxious debates which
we hold with ourselves whether we can or cannot afford a certain thing;
in our attempts to justify our wisdom; in the risk and recklessness of
our operations; in the long deferred and final joy of our possession;
but this is a kind of pleasure which the man of boundless means never
knows. The buying of pictures affords us an excellent illustration on
this point. Men of the type of Balzac's _Cousin Pons_ attain to
rapture in the process because they are poor. They have to walk weary
miles and wait long weeks to get upon the track of their treasure; to
use all their knowledge of art and men to circumvent the malignity of
dealers; to experience the extremes of trepidation and of hope; to deny
themselves comforts, and perhaps food, that they may pay the price
which has at last, after infinite dispute, reached an irreducible
minimum; and the pleasure of their possession is in the ratio of their